How to Use the Mac Console App to Diagnose a Crash

Your Mac is probably pretty trouble free, at least most of the time. But occasionally you may experience a system, process, or app crash that stops you in your tracks, and prevents you from continuing to work. These crashes are usually fleeting in nature, and resolved by simply relaunching the app or restarting your Mac.

And while an occasional crash can be frustrating, it’s generally not something to worry too much about. Stuff happens, and you can think of it as one of the many reasons you have a good backup system in place. (You do, don’t you?)

Now, when a crash starts occurring on a more regular basis, or you notice it always happens when x event occurs, it may be time to start delving into the crash and discover what may be causing the problem.

In this Rocket Yard Guide, we’re going to take a look at using the Console app to track down the cause of a system or app crash. With any luck, the Console app will be able to help you resolve the problem that’s causing the crash, or at least give you a good idea of what’s going on.

What is the Console App?
Back in the early years of computing, the console was a terminal that was attached to a computer to monitor the status of the system. If you go back even further, the console may have been a bank of meters, lights, and switches that indicated how well the computer was operating.

The Console app included with the Mac is a modern-day version of the old computer console; its primary job is to help you monitor how well your Mac is operating. It can do this because of its ability to display logs, status, and error files your Mac’s operating system and individual apps generate as they’re running.

Log Files
There are a number of different types of files that apps, processes, and the system generate as they work; you can think of them as a journal or diary of what’s going on at any point in time. While there are diagnostic files, crash files, log files, and a few other types, we’re going to refer to them collectively as log files. And for the most part, they can all be read by the Console app.

The Console app can also look at process messages, and a few other real-time events, but we’re going to concentrate on looking at log files to discover what happened in the past, such as when the system or an app crashed.